In an elevator apparatus in which a car installed in a hoistway of a building moves up and down between floors to carry personnel and luggage, in order to raise and lower the car, a certain gap is provided between each floor and the car. For this reason, when the car is landed on the platform and doors of a doorway are opened, the gap appears between a doors sill of the platform side and the door sill of the car side. The gap between the door sills causes a person to trip or causes a wheelchair or a handcart to derail, thus being dangerous. Small goods including a key and a card can fall into a pit of the elevator apparatus through the gap, and are hard to retrieve in some cases.
An apparatus is proposed to seal the gap with a seal member when the door is open. See a patent document 1, for example, Japanese published unexamined application 10-250962.
In the apparatus in accordance with the patent document 1, a plate that seals the gap between the door sills is installed in the lower part of the car floor. When the door of the elevator apparatus opens, the plate rotates, so that the gap between the door sills is sealed by the plate.
The plate prevents things from falling into the pit of the elevator apparatus. The plate is rotated by being urged by the hinge and the return spring, and the gap is closed. The door presses the push-down lever provided on the plate side when the door is closed. As a result, the plate rotates against the urging force of the return spring, and the gap is released.
In such an apparatus, the push-down lever for rotating the plate pushes one end of the plate. As a result, the plate rotates. For this reason, when the width of the entrance to the car is large, a large operating force is required to operate the push-down lever for rotating the plate against the biasing force of the return spring. Therefore, the load on the door increases when the door is closed. Also, since the operation area of the push-down lever is widened, a large space is required for installation.
An object of the present invention is to provide an elevator apparatus having a mechanism capable of being installed in a small space, capable of closing a gap with a small force even when the width of the doorway is wide or when the gap between the doorways is wide.
The above object is realized by a seal member that mechanically interlocks with the opening and closing of the car door and closes the gap between the door sill on the landing side and the door sill on the car side. The seal member closes the gap by being pivoted by a link mechanism without requiring a large operating force.